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Has been found by who? Where is your data? Where are these studies? You're making up things out of thin air.

Pretty much all studies done on overtime and productivity. which is a big part of why the overtime rules were allowed to exist in the first place.

No, your claim is that it is "stupid" to work more than 40 hours because your productivity drops. As an employee who gets overtime pay ("time-and-a-half"), my productivity doesn't matter at all to me. And if I'm self-employed, I make more money for every extra hour worked as long as I make a non-zero salary.

True, but damage to your brain and heart, which overtime creates, should matter to you, not even considering that free time should be valuable to you on its own. If you had balls and a boss that wasn't an idiot, tell him to fuck off, pay you 75% more per hour, and let you rest, because that'd be better for everyone.

What constitutes indie is one questions (and AAA is even harder to come to a consensus, even among my work peers) but that said...

As a child of the 80's, who adamantly played video games (e.g., Apple ][, arcade, 2600, NES, etc...) and got into professional game development over 10 years ago (I work for a AAA studio and my have my own gig for nights/weekends) I'd agree with those who say now, 2014, is the best time for indie game development.

Powerful engines and Middleware tools are accessible with licenses that fit indie budgets (e.g., Unity3d, Unreal4, etc...) as well as a swatch of free software for development. (e.g. Phaser: http://phaser.io/ Blender http://www.blender.org/ Love https://love2d.org/ Flixel http://flixel.org/ Haxe http://haxe.org/ )

The internet, as-is, provides indies with a way for
- distance-collaboration (Skype, E-mail, Groups, etc...)
- community building (Twitter, CMSs, Facebook, etc...)
- fundraising (IndieGogo, Kickstarter, HumbleBundle, Paypal, custom web-based donation system, etc...)
- advertising (game communities, news outlets, etc...)

Organizations, such as the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA, http://igda.org/ ) and events like the Global Game Jam, PAX (IndieMegabooth), and MAGFest also contribute to the community of indie game developers.

It is a great time to be an indie game developer in terms of accessibility and ability to achieve a sustainable income.

I'm willing to have an open mind. Can you give me some examples of sexist and homophobic games? I can't think of any homophobic ones. That would be odd considering that the video game/tech industry has a reputation for being an advocate for lgbt rights and homosexuals make up a larger percent of professionals in the industry than most others. Duke Nukem was a bit sexist, but it in no way represents the entire industry. I can't think of any other sexist games. Let me ask you something, do think Super Mario Brothers is a sexist product? If so, we would have to agree to disagree. Now, if you're talking about chat-rooms and voip communications, I actually agree, there is a TON of bigoted chat content, although that is more representative of school-boy/internet troll culture and not the industry. Still, I think there should be a stricter policy on this type of behavior, children learn some HORRIBLE habits from these atmospheres, I would definitely bust my kids ass if I heard him talking like most people do online (trolls). References. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L... http://archives.igda.org/diver... (note, the percentage of gay employees may look small but is far above the percentage of gays in the US population, also one of the highest percentage of transgender employers by percentage, "homophobic" indeed) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

Sometimes it helps to actually click on the articles on google, and see what they cited. A two minute search turned up:
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Munster/Industrial/chap17.htm
http://www.worklessparty.org/timework/chapman.htm
http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5190.html
http://isme.tamu.edu/JSCOPE97/Belenky97/Belenky97.htm

I'm sure a more thorough search would turn up that much more. There's certainly something on JSTOR, for example.

Google, and other search engines, apparently unavailable to you here is something to help you out: http://www.igda.org/why-crunch-modes-doesnt-work-six-lessons

Go to IGDA meetings

I thought of that until I realized there were no chapters in Indiana. I'd have to take a bus to Chicago or Detroit and rent a hotel room.

Check development boards for your platform of choice.

That's my problem: I don't yet have a mainstream platform of choice beyond native development (that is, Windows).

Keep an updated LinkedIn profile, and subscribe to lots of relevant groups.

So I don't need an invitation from an established member?

Most of the time people say "iPhone" it's shorthand for "iOS devices".

Except when it's an iPhone 4 and the product under development requires the larger RAM in the iPhone 4 and not the iPod touch 4.

If you're doing a project for a company, they usually won't have a problem loaning you a device you don't have.

I wasn't aware of that. I thought there were so many job seekers that candidates without their own equipment were rejected outright.

Source: http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

Anyways, we are a startup with almost a year live. None of the employees have ownership/stock and all are salary. Salaries are at normal industry rates. What should I say to him when we talk about this again?

Here, this link is all you need to know: http://archives.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php. It's a bit of a wall of text, but you can read the first part and then skip to the end, which contains this nugget:

In most times, places, and industries over the past century, managers who worked their employees this way would have been tagged as incompetent -- not just because of the threat they pose to good worker relations, but also because of the risk their mismanagement poses to the company's productivity and assets. A hundred years of industrial research has proven beyond question that exhausted workers create errors that blow schedules, destroy equipment, create cost overruns, erode product quality, and threaten the bottom line.

When will the management at game studios address this troubling issue properly?

They'll address it when people stop standing for it.

They'll address it when they get the memo (assuming they take time to actually read it).

Join the nearest IGDA chapter and go to meetings.

I looked at the list and couldn't find one in, say, Indiana. How does one find the money to move to a state that has an IGDA chapter?

While ultra violent and racist games continue to be developed, and the violence and stereotyping mostly left unchecked and/or swept under the rug, sex in videogame is still as controversial as ever. I don't know if this is off topic considering the title of the thread "On the Advent of Controversial Video Games" but as chairperson of the IGDA Sex-SIG I feel somewhat compelled to comment. http://www.igda.org/sex/ [igda.org]

Even though the average age of gamers is 28+ years and older... its kind of hypocritical that youth can get relatively easy access to this kind of ultra violent and/or seemingly racist content (typically ERSB approved ) that is training and desensitizing another generation of gamers.

Throw some good old missionary or doggy style sex between a man and a woman and your in hot water. Enough hot water to make a lot of people boil over with antiquated ideas and opinions that games are for kids and they need to be sex needs to be kept out of the game experience period.

'Hot Coffee' as GTA pulisher Take2 found out... creates more controversy than its worth for mainstream publishers to venture forward. Maybe its teh way they did that matters inthat case but it was quite the controversy for a while.

Sony's God of War threesome and Bioware's Mass Effect alien lesbian scenes that cut away from the real action but leave pretty much nothing to the imagination about what's going to happen next are posted all over YouTube for anyone to see. These two semi-famous examples haven't landed those publishers in too much hot water so maybe attitudes are changing. After all any under age person who known's how to Google two keywords 'Free Porn' will see more than any virtual sex scene in any RPG game will ever be able to portray.

That said as Chairperson of the Sex-SIG (with a personal and professional goal of evangelizing Sex in Games), and also as a developer and publisher promoting sex RPGs I have coined the phrase 'Sex is Not the Enemy". We basically sell only online to consenting adults with credit cards who want to see sex in a videogame like environment, and you would be surprised how many do! We feel that letting users play out whatever fantasy the want from straight sex to gay to you name it, is one of the last frontiers in the storytelling required to make games as complete and compelling as Hollywood movies for instance or even a good smut book.

For a publisher in the sex in videogames niche its a fine line between commerce and artistic merit for the fantasy simulations that gamers want too see and control but we have to do what we have to do to strike a balance between giving what our users want and providing an experience that users will subscribe to from month to month and development costs.

That said I want to leave a link to a video clip by Daniel Floyd I think summarizes the challenges and controversy about sex in games and the challenges between getting it right from an interactive storytelling experience and creating a game that is commercially viable with all the obstacles a sex game faces.

http://www.gamerotica.com/video/view/57-video-games-and-sex

BTW we realize about 50% of gamers think sex in games is a waste of time and lame but with 100's of millions of gamers now in the world the other 50% are demanding it so us and others like Red Light Center, Bonetown etc. will continue to deliver.

While ultra violent and racist games continue to be developed, and the violence and stereotyping mostly left unchecked and/or swept under the rug, sex in videogame is still as controversial as ever. I don't know if this is off topic considering the title of the thread "On the Advent of Controversial Video Games" but as chairperson of the IGDA Sex-SIG I feel somewhat compelled to comment. http://www.igda.org/sex/

Even though the average age of gamers is 28+ years and older... its kind of hypocritical that youth can get relatively easy access to this kind of ultra violent and/or seemingly racist content (typically ERSB approved ) that is training and desensitizing another generation of gamers.

Throw some good old missionary or doggy style sex between a man and a woman and your in hot water. Enough hot water to make a lot of people boil over with antiquated ideas and opinions that games are for kids and they need to be sex needs to be kept out of the game experience period.

'Hot Coffee' as GTA pulisher Take2 found out... creates more controversy than its worth for mainstream publishers to venture forward. Maybe its teh way they did that matters inthat case but it was quite the controversy for a while.

Sony's God of War threesome and Bioware's Mass Effect alien lesbian scenes that cut away from the real action but leave pretty much nothing to the imagination about what's going to happen next are posted all over YouTube for anyone to see. These two semi-famous examples haven't landed those publishers in too much hot water so maybe attitudes are changing. After all any under age person who known's how to Google two keywords 'Free Porn' will see more than any virtual sex scene in any RPG game will ever be able to portray.

That said as Chairperson of the Sex-SIG (with a personal and professional goal of evangelizing Sex in Games), and also as a developer and publisher promoting sex RPGs I have coined the phrase 'Sex is Not the Enemy". We basically sell only online to consenting adults with credit cards who want to see sex in a videogame like environment, and you would be surprised how many do! We feel that letting users play out whatever fantasy the want from straight sex to gay to you name it, is one of the last frontiers in the storytelling required to make games as complete and compelling as Hollywood movies for instance or even a good smut book.

For a publisher in the sex in videogames niche its a fine line between commerce and artistic merit for the fantasy simulations that gamers want too see and control but we have to do what we have to do to strike a balance between giving what our users want and providing an experience that users will subscribe to from month to month and development costs.

That said I want to leave a link to a video clip by Daniel Floyd I think summarizes the challenges and controversy about sex in games and the challenges between getting it right from an interactive storytelling experience and creating a game that is commercially viable with all the obstacles a sex game faces.

http://www.gamerotica.com/video/view/57-video-games-and-sex

BTW we realize about 50% of gamers think sex in games is a waste of time and lame but with 100's of millions of gamers now in the world the other 50% are demanding it so us and others like Red Light Center, Bonetown etc. will continue to deliver.

thXXX

Brad Abram

As opposed to all the other things you don't like in your terms of employment? Frankly, I'm happier with the idea of Epic saying up front "we expect you to work 60 hour weeks" than of ending up somewhere which has a 37.5-hour week on the contract, but then gives you negative performance reviews and references if you fail to be at the office before your boss every Saturday.

Not to say I'd necessarily take a job at Epic. I don't think they're bad for doing it, I just think they're wrong.

Find a job where the people there are into technology. Some places, the developers consider software to be a job, and when they go home they watch TV and go to sporting events. Other places they go home and collaborate on projects, build Battlebots, and read Make magazine.

Talk to the developers. You might think that the company where they build robots with lasers would be staffed with industrious geeks, but it might turn-out that the corporate environment stifles such people.

You might want to talk to people in user's groups. Find your local LUG, IGDA chapter, ACM meeting, or IEEE charter. See where those people work (or don't work, if they aren't your type)

We've published two books (already mentioned above) about how to break in, and how to do the job. Our mailing list is always an interesting place to talk about where games and writing intersect. The point is - there are quite a few people taking a look at this problem. It's just not as simple as it seems.

It seems there are lots of people who consider themselves better because they work ridiculous hours. Here's news for you:

It works only in the short term, like the last few days before a deadline. Over longer periods, exhaustion will drive your productivity below that of someone working 40 hrs/week. For a nice summary see http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php.

But many managers and employees still seem to believe in 50-70 hour weeks.

The most complete guide is on the International Game Developers site http://www.igda.org/biz/submission_guide.php (free reg req.) That's an industry standard. Also, Sloperama.com is perhaps the best resource on the web for game submission techniques and requirements for game jobs. He is a 30+ year expert in the field and deals with your question specifically with GDD examples and everything else.

I'm a member of the IGDA, and we get this question all the time over at those forums. If everybody read Sloperama, everybody would save a lot of time.

If you want more reading material, check out the IGDA's Breaking In FAQ.

I agree that most games degrees are not up to scratch yet. But this area is in its infancy, and it will continue to improve. There are a number of games courses that are highly thought of in the industry, as approved by schemes such as the UK's "Skillset" accredited courses. CS degrees do not equip graduates with a complete skill set to work as a programmer of high-budget console games. Some CS graduates do have the skills, but not because they learned them at university - it is because they learned to write games in their own time! A professional industry should not rely on hobbyists; it needs formal training.

Read the Curriculum Framework published by the Independent Game Developers Association (IGDA) and then tell me of any CS degree that provides that skills portfolio. There is no such course that I know of! Skillset's requirements (http://www.skillset.org/games/accreditation/apply/article_6162_1.asp ) are even more demanding than IGDA's, which perhaps explains why only two games programming courses (and two art courses) in the UK were accredited.

Don't tar all game programming courses with the same brush! Many of them are still poor, but it doesn't mean that game courses are all a joke, or that it's a bad idea to teach game development.

* 34.3% of developers expect to leave the industry within 5 years, and 51.2% within 10 years.
* Only 3.4% said that their coworkers averaged 10 or more years of experience.
* Crunch time is omnipresent, during which respondents work 65 to 80 hours a week (35.2%). The average crunch work week exceeds 80 hours (13%). Overtime is often uncompensated (46.8%).
* 44% of developers claim they could use more people or special skills on their projects.
* Spouses are likely to respond that "You work too much..." (61.5%); "You are always stressed out." (43.5%); "You don't make enough money." (35.6%).
* Contrary to expectations, more people said that games were only one of many career options for them (34%) than said games were their only choice (32%).

And this was also my experience when I was working as a game developer.

Well, Bethesda was worried that they wouldn't be able to fit Oblivion on one DVD, although they did manage to squeeze everything down in the end.

Rage, Id's next game, is going to ship on two DVDs, or one BluRay disc.

What about the SRD is not free? I don't see how the "Product Identity" clause of the OGL affects the SRD because the SRD doesn't include any WotC "Product Identity." Are you referring to something else?

See my other posts in this thread for more clarification (including links to the criticism sections of the WikiPedia pages on Open gaming and d20 System). I'll also address your question here[1].

The biggest problems are outlined in the above Technomancer Press quote, which alleges that US patent and copyright laws specifically do not protect game mechanics themselves[2], only algorithmic implementations (i.e. software patents) and the copyright on the text itself (i.e. on grounds of plagiarism). Given this assumption, Technomancer Press makes d20 System/D&D-compatible products without the Open Game License or d20 System License. To avoid the copyright issues, they simply don't paste sections of the System Reference Document (or any other copyrighted works) to any excess prohibited by law. This allows them to do things expressly prohibited by the OGL, such as citing a specific page in the Players Handbook or calling the person running the game "Dungeon Master." OGL as it currently stands is a good approximation of Free Culture, but it's not quite there.

See also my earlier post citing the Technomancer Press FAQ (which more closely picks at the issues with the OGL), an IGDA article on Protecting Game-Play rules and the legal struggles of Data East (and as a cons, the rulings on KC Munchkin), which are the best I could come up with for citations.

[1] - I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, I don't know the hard facts, and I have no intent to spoil or harm Wizards of the Coast or the Open Gaming movement. I am an advocate of Free Culture, and I will someday soon release my own D&D campaign world under a more free license.

[2] - I could not find a direct citation of this claim, though I'm sure I've read that there was a definitive Supreme Court ruling protecting game mechanics from patent in the same way that many Slashdotters would like to see software go. It may not have been Technomancer Press.

The International Game Developers Association has been working on this sort of problem and is trying to come up with guidelines for giving fair credit to game developers http://www.igda.org/credit/. Perhaps this will give them a bit more attention.

One other thing that people forget is that frequently the problems that crop up that programmers and IT folks have to fix are problems that may not have occurred had the work force been better rested. Near the end of a particular development cycle, we were working 12 to 14 hour shifts 6 or 7 days a week, alternating between folks during the day and folks at night. Near gold, it was basically a team would come in and have to fix the bug caused by the folks the earlier 12 hour shift caused fixing another bug. Everyone was so overworked that nobody could make rational steps towards fixing things properly. Seemed to me that we could have finished off earlier were we not pressed into 'work every hour you're awake' mode for the last 4 weeks. You end up causing problems that you then have to stay up even more hours to fix.

The International Game Developers Association (IGDA) has a Special Interest Group (SIG) about accessibility. There are some really interesting links and documents to be found. Search it yourself at http://www.igda.org/accessibility/.
Also [shameless plug] this year's Retro Remakes Competition (scroll down till Competition to see the rules, or search the news to find the games entered) was held with disabled gamers in mind. At least in that community, accessibility is kept in mind.

Only that it does not really work. Overworked programmers are tired programmers who make more mistakes. Long ago, research has shown that the best productivity is reached with a 40 hour week.

For details, see http://www.igda.org/articles/erobinson_crunch.php

Did we expand the definition of developers to include "columnist and game design lecturer" and "director of business relations?"

It's fair to call Earnest Adams a developer. Sure, he did a good chunk of his career on Madden, but there is no shame in doing a stint on serialized sports games. Plus his writing is generally insightful and at times usable in a production environment, which is a good lot more than can be said for many design lecturers. He also co founded the Independent Game Developer's Association and the Game Developer's Conference.

Did I mention he's one of the few game design writers who isn't a complete idiot? Honestly, that's the most shocking achievement.

As for the biz dev guy from highmoon studios... in a company that small, their business people are probably with it. What he says is mostly insightful, so he should be given the benefit of the doubt.

As for Gamasutra's methodology: they sent out a shotgun of e-mails and got some back. Two happened to be from "important" people at one company. They are still separate people, though.

[Joe Blade 2 is] prior art from 1988.

Joe Blade 2 may be prior art for some of the claims of US Patent 5,718,632 assigned to Namco, as may some other games mentioned in this thread on IGDA Forums, but claim 12 refers explicitly to an optical disk. At the time, Spectrum games were distributed on cassette, not Compact Disc Digital Audio. So even if none of the rest of the claims hold up under reexamination, if Namco was the first to do it with a CD, claim 12 may remain valid against Linux distributors.

And yes, I said annual, and the most recent result I could find was 2003. I think the 2005 results are still being tallied? And 2004? Must have been a bad year...

The patent has already expired, 3/29/05.

Check out the bottom of this page:

http://www.igda.org/columns/lastwords/lastwords_Ma y05.php

Bill

Nathan Garrelts, a professor at my college, is trying to work video games into the curriculum by discussing their cultural dynamics and examining them as literary works. He wrote an excellent article called "Will Master Chief Ever Frag Moby Dick?" for the International Game Developers Association. He has also edited a collection of essays on how digital media influences our perceptions, and how our perceptions influence how we interact with digital media. I wrote an article about him for our newspaper back in December of last year. He's a blast to talk to, and he is really passionate about bringing games and other digital media into a more positive light.

The IGDA website is devoid of any mention of this new group. The International Game Developers Association already has a substantial presence in the industry.

I imagine there's a much larger existing userbase for input devices for the disabled in the PC world. What prevents someone from using one of these devices for gaming? I'm not too familiar with this kind of stuff but I'm sure there's a sort of trackball . keyboard combo that could be used. You might not innately be as quick as you used to be (or as other players), but you'd be surprised...

When I went to college a fellow student at the end of the hall was very big into games. I believe his console of choice was the Saturn and he played it with an arcade-style joystick. What's surprising about him is that he had a pretty serious congenital disorder: he was born without arms, and just small, working hands at the end of his shoulders. I believe he moved the joystick with his mouth. He was a pretty good player too.

Worthy of mention too, is Pin Interactive's Terraforma, which is a game designed both for sighted and unsighted gamers. Even for sighted gamers, the game offers a high-contrast mode. A playable demo is available.

One of the lead developers of Terraforma mentions in this article that there are other games for the disabled - he specifically mentions MUDs as well as some really neat off-the-wall concepts like games that use a "breating interface".

I'm glad that attention is being paid to this. I don't think it will mean increased business for Nintendo in any measurable term, but then everything isn't about revenue.

Following the maze of redundant blog posts you end up at this, which appears to be the original article.

Framed a little differently though, as it's titled "E3 Censorship".

the PS2 lags pretty significantly in its technology (long loading times, framerates, jaggies).

I will admit very few people have put it all together but the PS2 has prove to be very compenent in all three areas you mentioned. JAK 2 and 3 showed that load times where unecessary, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and God of War shows that Jagies are no issue (oh and they have no load time issues), God of war showed slow down is a thing of the past , and GT4 showed that when you can sustain 1080i then frame rate is really insignificant. It's interesting that PS2 games get better while XBox games stay pretty so so. Most Xbox fans will tell you that beyond a few minor things like downloadable content, Halo is superior to Halo 2. Oh and by the way does XBox even have any games other than the Halo series? I just realize I can't recall any other Xbox games that get the kind of talk that Katamari Damashi, Disgae or the obvious Final Fantasy get.

So lets try and nip the fan boy thing in the bud once and for all.
Game Critic Awards for 2005 show not one XBox exclusive winner, where ps2 has 2 and heck ps3 grabs 2.
We can make it 2 to 2 at Game Developers Choice awards, and that's including one given to xbox the the I love bees thing.
Over at spike tv Xbox gets the lead with two exclusives where PS2 gets none.
Ign in 2004 (because 2005 is not out yet) give 5 best ofs to PS2 and 2 to Xbox.
I would have put of Gamespots best of but with the buzz I have going it was to hard to calculate.

I guess if you are interested in spending $400 (I'm talking earlier adopters) for the one game worth playing on XBox, then that's fine with me.. I mean there were a few people that shelled out over $200 a pop for neo-geo games.

It is indeed "funny" that they completely ignore the quality of life issue, when IGDA devotes a large portion of their work to that topic.

If we were to take this story and draw it to its absurd, logical conclusion, we could just as well write an article about all the money that sex workers pull down without referencing the health issues (and no health care), the personal sacrifices and the quality of life issues.

If you don't mention quality of life, benefits, anti-discrimination considerations and job security, you might as well just pick a career based on the one with the most money and hope it isn't too bad.

Also, due to the incredible supply of people that want to work in the games industry you'd expect the average salary of a game software developer to be less. I know in the company I work for starting SW developer salary is around 55K right out of college. In any event, it seems that their numbers for SW engineers is a bit high.

There was extensive discussion of this on the International Game Developer's Association women in the games industry mailing list. The overall conclusions of this discussion were:

Microsoft is not trying to appeal to Mom gamers, they are trying to provide information to help you convince mom (your wife, your actual mom) that purchasing an X-box 360 is a justifiable expense. Women are often the financial gatekeepers in a household. Unless you're quite wealthy, spending $300-400 on a new console system is going to involve "running it by mom". If you can tell Mom, "it's a DVD player" and "we can view our photos on it" and "we can listen to music on it" it makes it sound like more than just a game machine, it makes it sounds like a home entertainment device. This might be slightly easier to sell Mom on than "it's the next big console!"

Furthermore these same arguments can help people who are their own financial gatekeepers reach the same conclusion. Living alone? Got a job but not a tonne of money to burn? Research has shown that when purchasing an expensive item, consumers often need to come up with some kind of justification for why the purchase in question is worth it. This is in part why high-end items often have extra arguably useless features. These extra features help you build a case in your head that spending the extra money "is worth it".

Microsoft doesn't have delusions of halo playing housewives, this is all part of convincing families and individuals that the 360 is more than just a gaming machine so they'll be willing to purchase it.

Oh but the video game industry DOES have a lobbyist and advocacy group! A few in fact! Here are some of the people who fight against Jack Thompson and WIN!

First we have the ESA, the Entertainment Software Association!

http://www.theesa.com/

Headed by Doug Lowenstein, a person Jack Thompson REALLY hates, the ESA is video game's no. 1 lobby group and is also the organization that developed the ESRB. While the ESA and ESRB are connected, the ESRB, headed by Patricia Vance, is a separate entity from the rest of the ESA because its sole purpose is to rate games. However, whenever a law, like the one in Illinois, passes, the ESA is the first one there to counter it. AND... they bring back up!

Back up like the VSDA, Video Software Dealers Association!

http://www.idealink.org/Resource.phx/vsda/events/h omeent2005/homeentnews.htx

This group handles video games, DVDs, and much more in terms of video and digital entertainment. From movies, to music, to video games, although with an emphasis on video, the members of this group include retailers and other companies in the entertainment industry who seek to promote and discover new technologies in providing digital entertainment, and also back the stance of movies as well as video games should government legislation possibly impose on them!

While not as big a lobbyist as they are a partner, the IEMA, Interactive Entertainment Merchants Association, works with the ESRB and ESA in terms of what goes on their member's shelves!

http://www.iema.org/

The IEMA has members such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and Target, and most members in the IEMA maintain a "Will not stock AO ratings" policy. This is fine since they work with the ESRB and listen to what the ESRB has to say about the games being given to them. This organization works well with the ESRB and ESA, and can come to support the organizations if necessary!

Second to last, one group that is close to the heart of the games industry, the IGDA, the International Game Developers Association!

http://www.igda.org/

This group of game developers is very well spoken in terms of how the creators of games feel about laws that go against their ability to make games. Whereas the ESA could best represent game publishers, the IGDA would represent the game makers themselves. The forum here is a great place for game designers to share ideas and voice opinions on current hot topics. A great community of minds, and should some Miami lawyer try and pass laws against them... well then they start showing teeth!

And last, one that I don't see much press about, but one that is behind most of my favorite hangouts, the CMP Game Group!

http://www.cmpgame.com/home.html

While not a lobbyist or advocacy group by any means, the CMP Game Group finances and provides several methods of information sharing and acheivement recognition in the game industry. They provide the website Gamasutra.com, publish Game Developers magazine, founded the Game Developers Conference, the GDC, the Game Developers Choice Awards, and the Independent Games Festival. If anyone can provide an accurate resource on what makes games the games they are, the CMP game group can provide it or find the person or persons who can!

So the game industry is not left un-defended. There are plenty of organizations out there to help out people at the ESA and ESRB should they ever come under fire. If you really want to stick it to Jack Thompson, then I suggest becoming a member of some of these organizations and fight with them!

After all, if not for gamers like us, they wouldn't have the power they do now!

~Otaku-Man

I've worked my share of 80+ hour weeks, and productivity doesn't go down.

Well, you think your productivity doesn't go down. One of the skills that decays quickly is evaluating how you're doing, and not just for beign tired. Drunk drivers think they can drive just fine, for example, and any hiker knows how insidious hypothermia is. As one back-country guide puts it, "the victim is the LAST to realize s/he's in danger".

My productivity kept on pretty much as normal. No 'cancelling out', no 'negative work', no extra mistakes. Yeah it can get a bit boring and maybe physically tiring, but that's why it's called 'work'.

There's plenty of evidence that, whatever applies for you, that's not true for humans. Here's a good summary: Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work.

I think you people are just lazy: you don't want to do much work,

Wrong! I love my work. But even when I'm obsessed with a new project and could happily work around the clock, I've learned to limit myself to 50 hours a week or so. More than that and I start losing my judgement and my enthusiasm. I can tell this pretty easily, as I write unit tests for all my code. After a couple of weeks of crunch mode I spend a lot more time bumping my head against the unit tests. And after a couple of days off to recover, I'll often realize that particular problems I was brute-forcing my way through could have been solved much more efficiently.

Another buddy said of the current crop of kids, "bright, cannot program, big egos." Only good if they can put in the 80 hours that I hear kids out of school and without families can do.

Probably not good even then. Both experience and research suggest that crunch mode doesn't work. At best, you get the appearance of success, but under the covers, the code's a mess. The project ends up with a lot of code debt. Likely the code base will be so smelly that v 2.0 will require a complete rewrite.

In my experience, a team of seasoned developers using modern techniques can get bug rates below one per developer-month, which means very low maintenance and operation costs, easy future expansion, and rarely opening the debugger. But a team of novices in crunch mode would be more like one bug per developer-day. Which means they'll spend those extra 40 hours a week mainly stepping through stuff in the debugger, not doing anything productive.

And I believe that if things are designated the equivalent of 'M'/'X' then there are many places that will/can not sell the item in the first place.

Three are three main problems with this.

1) The parents should be deciding what is appropriate for their children, not a political process

2) The political committee will be susceptible to creep of what is not allowed. If the industry is lucky, then the definitions will be clear what is allowed and what is not. If not, they'll have to 'guess' what to leave out to get a 'PG13' or whatever rating the developer/publisher desires.

3) The developer having to censor the content of a game to 'make' a rating is not a good thing. It means that the play of the game will be determined by the lowest common (political) denominator and not by the market choice of the people buying and playing the game.

The IGDA's Censorship advocacy group has a lot of good information on the censorship problems the industry is facing. http://www.igda.org/censorship/

This is not the first annual, nor is it the "Penguin Award". It is the First Penguin award and this is the fifth time it will be given out:
http://www.igda.org/awards/archive_penguin.htm
http://www.igda.org/awards/penguin.htm

Anm

This is not the first annual, nor is it the "Penguin Award". It is the First Penguin award and this is the fifth time it will be given out:
http://www.igda.org/awards/archive_penguin.htm
http://www.igda.org/awards/penguin.htm

Anm

I much prefer the video game market of the early 1990s, where there were lots of games being put out by small start-ups, and they could get attention. The simple fact of the matter was there was a lot of variety on the market because you had a lot of people taking risks to try to break into the market rather than a lot of people churning out the same tired old shite in order to protect their market dominance.
The video game market of the early 1990s was a different time. Games were simpler and cheaper to make, and the community that played games was mostly the same computer nerds that created them.
Now to produce a mainstream game you need more programmers with more specialized experience, as well as dedicated artists, larger support staffs, etc. Small companies don't have the economy of scale to support such staffs, that's why there is consolidation. It's also why the games are more bland and dumbed-down, because to support the staff required they have to bring in the dollars from average joes.
If you are looking for the same intelligent and innovative spirit of the early 1990s, it's still alive, it's just moved out of commercial space into the mod communities. In fact I would say things are better than that time, because mod developers are able to focus on gameplay rather than worrying about developing the technology; and the games are free for us gamers.
As for your crap about helping disadvantaged youths, how do you think they got to be disadvantaged? Maybe because the middle class works for chicken-feed at massive companies like EA, and their relatively low income drives down the price of low-income services and such, which drives down the pay of the parents of those disadvantaged kids. Or maybe because big companies like EA like to work with as few employees as possible, which increases unemployment and competition for other jobs, which drops pay, which also leads to those disadvantaged kids being poor.
The average salary is $62,500/yr, not exactly chicken feed. To associate difficult work conditions for programmers with the problems of disadvantaged youth is too much.
Having to work 80 hour weeks so you can keep the payments up on your BMW does not compare to the structural and social issues impacting those growing up in lower economic conditions. Improving the economic and social environment for the underprivlidged to encourage education and entrepreneurship is much more important to the long term development and well being of this country. If a programmer gets fed up with his working conditions they can work elsewhere, maybe not in the games industry they love, but there are options. Those from poor conditions who have not been given opportunities for education or experience have no such options.

I've always personally enjoyed cooperative games more than competitive.

I've always personally enjoyed cooperative games more than competitive.

Hi, I worked with a program at Boston College called Eagle Eyes, which is a project that allows people with severe motor disabilities to control a cursor with their eye movements. One of the major problems in designing games for these types of interfaces is that click times are extremely slow, so much so that they almost have to be completely discounted.
The game I built is a 3D downhill skiing game where you control speed by looking up/down, and steer by looking left/right.
If you contact the Eagle Eyes project, I'm sure they can direct you to more games and if you are interested in the skiing game, send me an e-mail at: s u p p o r t @ a l t e r e d v i s t a . c o m and I'll send you a copy. (Unfortunately, the skiing game is Windows only, as it relies upon DirectX.)
Also, there is a movement in the game development community to try to reach out to gamers with disabilities. For more information on that, visit the International Game Developers Association Accessibility SIG
All the best.

As the IGDA's executive director, it is always great to see public discussion of the org. Kinda sad, however, to read that what we do is pretty worthless :(

In part, I'll take the blame for not spending many org resources on marketing/promotion. Ironically, for all the problems we work on, one of our biggest challengs is simply getting the attention of developers (as we all know how busy and overworked they are ;)

More seriously, many developers simply don't care, or can't look much beyond their immediate task, their impending deadline, etc, to participate in the community around them - or to help work on the problems that will effect them and the industry beyond tomorrow...

To say that the IGDA is meaningless is to demonstrate your own ignorance, or rather, unwillingness to stop and read for more than 10seconds. To name just a few "real" accomplishments:

- helped thwart several goverment efforts to regulate/censor video games http://www.igda.org/censorship/lobbying.php

- developed a curriculum framework that has been used to guide almost every school that now offers a game degree/program http://www.igda.org/academia/curriculum_framework. php

- recently started a SIG, with Stuart Roch (executive producer at Shiny) as chair to lead efforts to formalize the production process http://www.igda.org/production/

- held a Business Summit at last GDC with 150 industry leaders to work on business issues within the industry (original vs licenses, contracts, royalties, etc) http://www.igda.org/biz/summit.php

- we present the Game Developers Choice Awards (arguably the "early oscars" of the game industry) each year at GDC and host a ceremony for 2000+ developers http://www.igda.org/awards

- we're doing all that Quality of Life stuff that was already mentioned http://www.igda.org/qol/

- Our Online Games SIG just released a ~100page Persistent Worlds white paper - for FREE. This kind of content normally has to be bought from analysts for thousands of dollars... This was posted on /. earlier... http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/13/ 2112231&tid=209

- we send 25 college students to GDC each year http://www.igda.org/scholarships/


I could go on...

In terms of members, we do have a diverse representation. But, to suggest we're just a bunch of student and newbie punks is incorrect. Yes, we have many student members (who, FYI, do not get to vote on org affairs), but we also have many of the world's top developers as members. Like who? Will Wright. Warren Spector. Richard Garriot. Raph Koster. Ray Muzyka & Greg Zeschuk. Gabe Newell. I could certainly go on...

Admittedly, our online forums are not frequented by many pros/vets. That's fine, as that's not the goal of the forums, and the forums are not necessarily representative of the rest of the IGDA. The forums are just one more thing we provide to the community, for those who want to use it...

Anyway, don't mean to get ranty.

I guess we need to do more of that marketing stuff... But, if someone is just looking for free trinkets or promos from the "club", we don't have much to offer - and, quite frankly, that's all a waste of time...

Jason

As the IGDA's executive director, it is always great to see public discussion of the org. Kinda sad, however, to read that what we do is pretty worthless :(

In part, I'll take the blame for not spending many org resources on marketing/promotion. Ironically, for all the problems we work on, one of our biggest challengs is simply getting the attention of developers (as we all know how busy and overworked they are ;)

More seriously, many developers simply don't care, or can't look much beyond their immediate task, their impending deadline, etc, to participate in the community around them - or to help work on the problems that will effect them and the industry beyond tomorrow...

To say that the IGDA is meaningless is to demonstrate your own ignorance, or rather, unwillingness to stop and read for more than 10seconds. To name just a few "real" accomplishments:

- helped thwart several goverment efforts to regulate/censor video games http://www.igda.org/censorship/lobbying.php

- developed a curriculum framework that has been used to guide almost every school that now offers a game degree/program http://www.igda.org/academia/curriculum_framework. php

- recently started a SIG, with Stuart Roch (executive producer at Shiny) as chair to lead efforts to formalize the production process http://www.igda.org/production/

- held a Business Summit at last GDC with 150 industry leaders to work on business issues within the industry (original vs licenses, contracts, royalties, etc) http://www.igda.org/biz/summit.php

- we present the Game Developers Choice Awards (arguably the "early oscars" of the game industry) each year at GDC and host a ceremony for 2000+ developers http://www.igda.org/awards

- we're doing all that Quality of Life stuff that was already mentioned http://www.igda.org/qol/

- Our Online Games SIG just released a ~100page Persistent Worlds white paper - for FREE. This kind of content normally has to be bought from analysts for thousands of dollars... This was posted on /. earlier... http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/13/ 2112231&tid=209

- we send 25 college students to GDC each year http://www.igda.org/scholarships/


I could go on...

In terms of members, we do have a diverse representation. But, to suggest we're just a bunch of student and newbie punks is incorrect. Yes, we have many student members (who, FYI, do not get to vote on org affairs), but we also have many of the world's top developers as members. Like who? Will Wright. Warren Spector. Richard Garriot. Raph Koster. Ray Muzyka & Greg Zeschuk. Gabe Newell. I could certainly go on...

Admittedly, our online forums are not frequented by many pros/vets. That's fine, as that's not the goal of the forums, and the forums are not necessarily representative of the rest of the IGDA. The forums are just one more thing we provide to the community, for those who want to use it...

Anyway, don't mean to get ranty.

I guess we need to do more of that marketing stuff... But, if someone is just looking for free trinkets or promos from the "club", we don't have much to offer - and, quite frankly, that's all a waste of time...

Jason